Xibo Open Source Digital SignageOpen source multi-display managed digital signage2015-03-16T13:11:49Zhttp://xibo.org.uk/feed/atom/WordPressDan Garnerhttp://springsignage.comhttp://xibo.org.uk/?p=11972015-03-16T13:11:49Z2015-03-16T13:11:49ZWe are pleased to announce our second bug fix release for the 1.7 series of Xibo. The codename for this series is “Tuttle”.

A new CMS and Windows Player are available with this release, with just over 70 bugs resolved.

The release notes are available in the manual and the download is available on Github.

]]>0Dan Garnerhttp://springsignage.comhttp://xibo.org.uk/?p=11952015-03-10T16:27:45Z2015-03-10T16:27:45ZWe are very pleased to announce that we are launching the new Xibo Community today. We have listened to feedback on GitHub, collected ideas and have settled on a new community discussion area right here on community.xibo.org.uk. There are categories for general discussion, support, features and FAQ and you can log in using all of your favourite services (Facebook, Twitter, Google, GitHub, etc).

We will still be using GitHub for development, but will only be tracking verified bugs on GitHub(bugs discussed in the community).

We look forward to some great Xibo discussion!

]]>0Dan Garnerhttp://springsignage.comhttp://xibo.org.uk/?p=11912015-02-28T14:00:26Z2015-02-28T14:00:26ZWe would like to announce that we have released a 1.7.1 Windows Player to use with our 1.7.1 CMS release earlier this month.

This new Windows Player contains several stability improvements and we recommend everyone using the 1.7.0 release to upgrade. The download is available here.

]]>0Dan Garnerhttp://springsignage.comhttp://xibo.org.uk/?p=11882015-02-08T15:09:44Z2015-02-08T15:09:44ZWe are proud to announce our first bug fix release for the 1.7 series of Xibo. The codename for this series is “Tuttle”.

This release fixes some important issues with the 1.7.0 release and we recommend everyone upgrade. This is a CMS only release and the 1.7.0 windows player should be used.

The release notes are available in the manual and the download is available on Github.

]]>0Dan Garnerhttp://springsignage.comhttp://xibo.org.uk/?p=11842015-01-26T17:48:06Z2015-01-26T17:48:06ZWe are proud to announce our first release for the 1.7 series of Xibo. The codename for this series is “Tuttle”.

It has taken us a little over 4 months to bring you the new features in this release – the highlights are:

The release notes are available in the manual and the download is available on Github.

We would like to take this opportunity to say a big Thank You to everyone involved in the Xibo Project Community. We couldn’t release Xibo without the help we get from people who reported bugs, submitted patches or donated money.

We have big plans for the future, so please subscribe to our RSS or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

]]>0Dan Garnerhttp://springsignage.comhttp://xibo.org.uk/?p=11752015-01-12T10:25:29Z2015-01-12T10:25:29ZThe Xibo Project has been hosted on Launchpad since December 2008 and we appreciate the excellent platform that has been provided free of charge over that time. Bazaar is an excellent version control system and the Bug reporting on Launchpad has been perfect for our needs up until now. However, as the project has grown we have very quickly realised we need to do all we can do to encourage contribution to the platform. With only 2 main contributors to date and a handful of occasional helpers, we have struggled to push forwards with our plans, fix bugs and get new software released in a timely fashion.

Xibo is essentially a PHP/.NET/Python project and these types of developers are far more abundant on Github than they are on Launchpad – and of course many developers are now learning Git as standard, rather than Bazaar. Therefore we have taken the difficult decision to move most of the project over to Github, starting with the stable release of 1.7.0.

Details for Users

The only difference to end users will be the location to get support and report problems. The old Launchpad Answers system will be replaced by Github Issues. The Answers system in Launchpad will still be active, but only for historical viewing. It will not be monitored for new issues. FAQs and Tutorial articles will be available in the User Manual.

Details for Developers

All new development and maintenance of existing releases will be managed on Github. The following transitions will occur immediately after the release of 1.7.0.

Code

The Source code will be transferred from Bazaar to Git and hosted on Github in a repository per component. This means there will be a repository for the CMS, one for the Windows Player, one for the Ubuntu Player, etc. There will be a central repository which glues everything together and provides an overview of the repository layout.

All active branches in Launchpad will be marked as abandoned, but where new Git repositories are created Launchpad Branches will be created to mirror “master” in those repositories.

Bugs and Features

Bugs and Features will be tracked using Github Issues. Features will be documented as a Blueprint on a Github Wiki located on the central repository. We will be porting over selected bugs and blueprints in the weeks following the migration.

Collaboration

Forking and submitting Pull Requests will be used as standard by the project development team and by any outside contributions.

Translations

Launchpad will contain a mirrored branch for each release and for the current development effort so that Translations can continue to occur in Launchpad.

Timing and Questions

We are planning to make the migration at the end of January 2015 to coincide with the release of our new stable 1.7.0 software . If anyone has any feedback on this migration please feel free to raise an issue on Github. It is our great hope that this move will increase the collaboration, increase exposure and ultimately result in a better product which is updated more frequently.

]]>0Dan Garnerhttp://springsignage.comhttp://xibo.org.uk/?p=11732015-01-26T16:48:32Z2015-01-09T12:57:58ZWe are proud to announce our first release candidate for the 1.7 series of Xibo. The codename for this series is “Tuttle”. We welcome all user testing for this release – problems should be reported in Launchpad Answers with a paragraph clearly stating that the 1.7.0-rc1 release is being tested.

The release candidate will run for 2 weeks and assuming there are no major problems, will be followed immediately by the stable 1.7.0 release.

The release notes are available in the manual and the download is available on Launchpad.

Please Note: This is a release candidate and should not be used in production.

]]>0Dan Garnerhttp://springsignage.comhttp://xibo.org.uk/?p=11702014-12-15T11:54:11Z2014-12-15T11:54:11ZThe Xibo Project has been working towards a cross platform Player for Windows and Linux for some time and had hoped that our Xibo for Ubuntu Python Client would meet our goals.

Unfortunately the Python Player development has been fraught with problems and limitations which has brought us to the difficult decision to discontinue development and seek another solution.

We are working on the roadmap for 1.8, which will include work for a cross platform client to replace both the alpha release of the Ubuntu Player and the Windows Player. This development will take some time and we do realise that users of Xibo for Ubuntu will be restricted to 1.6 until this development can take place.

We have taken every effort in 1.7 to ensure that existing 1.6 players will continue to connect and receive content – for the Ubuntu Player this will be restricted to the core image and video based media types.

We are looking forward to the future of a cross platform Windows and Linux player and will bring this to you all as soon as we can.

]]>0Dan Garnerhttp://springsignage.comhttp://xibo.org.uk/?p=11662015-01-26T16:22:02Z2014-11-26T15:51:49ZWe are proud to announce the release of our first BETA for the 1.7 series of Xibo. The codename for this series is “Tuttle”. We would welcome beta testing for this release – problems should be reported in Launchpad Answers with a paragraph clearly stating that the 1.7.0-beta release is being tested.

This is primarily a bug fix release for the new features in 1.7.0-alpha2, but you can also test the following new items:

CMS

More effects on Tickers and Text

Installable Forecast Module based on the Forecast API

Installable Twitter Module

Up/Down alerts for User with View Permissions to displays

Settings for force HTTPS/STS

Started to update the Manual for 1.7

The release notes are available in the manual and the download is available on Launchpad.

We hope that our next release in 1.7 will be 1.7.0-rc1 and will be feature frozen pending the stable 1.7.0 release early next year!

Please Note: This is a beta release and should not be used in production.

]]>0Dan Garnerhttp://springsignage.comhttp://xibo.org.uk/?p=11582014-10-22T11:46:33Z2014-10-23T07:00:19ZThe Xibo Project is fast approaching a stable 1.7 release of Xibo named “Tuttle” and we’d like to let our community know what to expect and what to look forward to.

2013 – At the start of 2013 we had some good news for Xibo and we wrote about it in our blog post “Upcoming in 2013“. Between then and now our remit for 1.5/1.6 grew into something much larger and resulted in 10 releases packed with new features.

2014 – Another exciting year for Xibo which has resulted in Spring Signage being able to provide full time development resources for Xibo. These resources came on-line in August 2014 and allowed us to speed up the improvement of the product and the products quality. In only 3 months we have a new website, new “Xibo in the Cloud” services, two 1.6 bug fixing releases and two alpha releases of 1.7 (“Tuttle”).

1.7 - our focus for Xibo 1.7 has been usability. We want to shake off our “digital signage for tech people” image and become the “digital signage for everyone” solution that our tag line promises. To do this we have had to re-engineer a number of Xibo processes as well as focus more on the user experience.

Here are some of the things you can expect to see in 1.7:

A new CMS theme.

Help on every form field.

A new installer and updater with more information.

A better calendar.

More translations, fewer gaps.

Simplified client installation.

Centralised client settings.

More modules (clock, weather).

Multi-select for key transactions.

Better layout design experience.

The usual general bug fixes, patches and improvements.

We hope to have 1.7 fully released as a stable version early 2015.

1.8 – code named “Tempel”, 1.8 is our future release that we have targeted for stable release in summer 2015. The exact roadmap is still being developed but we have 2 key objectives to meet with this release:

Playlists within regions – reusable playlists with start/end dates that exist inside a region and can be reused across multiple layouts.

We are very grateful to the Xibo community for the support with reporting bugs, asking and answering questions and Xibo for Android purchases. We hope that the above is as exciting for new and existing users as it is for us.